Imagine stepping into a middle school with pink pastel exterior walls and the kind of aesthetic that feels like something taken directly from a Wes Anderson film. It might sound farfetched to some, but the Enrico Fermi School in the gorgeous hills of Turin, Italy, has achieved exactly that.
The award-winning project is the work of the Turin architectural firm BDR Bureau. Architects worked on the existing school building, which was built in the 1960s in the Nizza Millefonti district, to transform the library, auditorium, cafeteria, gym, classrooms, and public spaces into something spectacularly beautiful. It’s so enchanting, in fact, that we’re not opposed to taking inspiration from the location and implementing some of the same tips in our own living spaces. Here’s a few of our favorite takeaways:
For the most part, the walls of each of the rooms in the school are open. That’s because the ground floor is an extension of the public space, offering a series of services open to the local community, such as the gym, the library, the auditorium, and the cafeteria. “We wanted a project able to dialogue with the existing building and revolutionize its function at the same time. New spatial elements, transparencies and additions reinterpret the original structure with the aim of opening the school to the city,” the project’s architects, Alberto Bottero and Simona Della Rocca, explained in a statement. You can consider this same concept for your own home using beautiful linen curtains and simple bookcases for customization when you may want to give the impression of separated rooms.
A pale salmon pink and a weathered green might not be the first two colors you’d naturally think to pair, but that’s the magic of what makes this charming little school feel so special—this atmosphere would’ve made tween angst a lot more manageable. Take a cue from BDR Bureau and put an emphasis on white, too, which will brighten and warm up colors at the same time.
If you have a staircase in your interior, why not use it to your advantage from a design perspective? Inside the walls of the Enrico Fermi School, the main staircase has been painted a loud shade of scarlet red, drawing in the eye as an element that is both functional and playful. In contrast to the rest of the white walls and pastel shades, it’s a major statement without too much work.
BDR Bureau made use of a pale pink color throughout the exterior of the building as well as on the inner walls of the terraces. According to the architectural firm, the terraces are an integral part of the teaching program, and will be used during classes and other activities. A fresh coat of an unexpected color of paint can add a lot of life and character to a regular old balcony.
If you have a window or wall facing an outdoor space with lots of greenery or a great scene, why not open it up and put it on display, by adding bigger, large-scale windows? Rather than thinking of what pieces of art or wall hangings to line your walls with, you’ll have great natural lighting and an intrinsic display of the outdoors.
